


build a home around me

by saddermachine



Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Far Future, M/M, Post-War, Reunions, author rewatched rogue one and got really upset
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-03-29 22:47:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19029508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saddermachine/pseuds/saddermachine
Summary: the galaxy has settled into its ruins and changmin runs to find a home amongst them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can wrench my belief that rogue one is a good star wars film from my cold, dead hands. 
> 
> it's gonna get happier (i swear). and the rating MIGHT change, but that solely depends on how brave i'm gonna be.

The war ends without much fanfare. It’s a message, a declaration signed under the two suns of EDEN-47, that slowly makes its way through the galaxy where several smaller wars are being fought, lost and won.

Changmin isn’t sure who fired the last shot. The galaxy is big and hell, it might have been him – pressing the muzzle of his blaster against the forehead of an Imperial soldier – but it might have been lightyears away and a lot more heroic than his final act.

The war ends and Changmin returns to a Rebel base on Yavin IV, looking for a cause and a way out of his nightmares. They offer him a pat on the shoulder, a bed in the hospital bay and some sleeping pills.

 

*

 

On the third day of peace, Changmin crawls out of his bed, pinches feeling back into his legs and heads off to find the mess hall and maybe some familiar faces. There aren’t many left now, the war’s gone on for too long and Changmin’s staring his 30th birthday in the face.

He takes one, long look at the scattered crowd in the mess hall and turns on his heel. Familiar faces – although few and far between – are there, but not the face he was searching for.

He’d promised himself two years ago to stop searching, to stop looking over his shoulder.

He’s broken this promise over a thousand times since.

 

The girl at the registry desk smiles a tired, worn-out smile when he sidles up.

“I was wondering,” he says, hesitating slightly when his stomach twists, “if you could look up a couple of people for me.”

“And what’s your name?” She asks.

It’s protocol, of course. Caution and a general lack of trust still rule supreme.

“Shim Changmin. 18288.”

She taps away at her ECHO-Pad until he sees his file and a slightly outdated picture of himself blow up on the screen.

 _Successful Missions:_  307

 _Failed Missions:_  9

His stomach twists again, violently, and he looks away.

“A saboteur,” she says, a wry smile flickering across her face. “Impressive.”

“It’s really not,” he replies honestly.

Changmin can’t remember the last honourable thing he did. He saved his own skin one too many times to allow himself that kind of healing balm for his soul.

“What names?”

There’s really nothing stopping him from speaking expect a lingering spark of fear. He knows what he has to do, knows that this is the only way at least some of the more metaphorical wounds will even begin to start healing, but that doesn’t get rid of the fear.

It won’t help him sleep, but it will help with the doubt. Once he’s finished with that he can move on to the guilt.

He flexes his hands and a barely healed scab on the right one bursts open.

“Kwon Boa,” he starts, “Choi Minho, Cho Kyuhyun and Jung Yunho.”

The ECHO-Pad flickers from blue to red to green and back again as she types. Names – hundreds of thousands – pass in a blur until–

“Kwon Boa,” the girl reads out. “Alive. Honourably discharged five days ago at an outpost on Batuu.”

She swipes to the left and the screen flashes from green to a bright red.

“Choi Minho,” she reads with a nervous glance at Changmin. “Deceased. Eadu. Two months ago.”

There’s a ringing in Changmin’s ears, but he ignores it.

“Cho Kyuhyun.” The screen flashes green. “Alive. Discharged on Dantooine four days ago.”

“ _And_?” Changmin presses.

Another left swipe and the screen flickers from red to blue in quick, headache-inducing succession before finally settling on an uncertain blue.

“Jung Yunho” – and Changmin mouths the words along with her, the ringing in his ears pitching to an almost deafening volume – “Missing. Last seen on—last seen on Jedha.”

 

*

 

He’s not dead.

That’s all Changmin can think about.

Jung Yunho is _not_ dead.

He stubbornly manages to ignore the little voice in the back of his head that points out that going missing on Jedha is basically a death sentence but phrased a little nicer.

Yunho is not dead.

Maybe hope is uglier than doubt. It gnaws at Changmin as he wastes away in the hospital bay, surrounded by people getting better, moving on, starting again.

He doesn’t sleep.

Hope might be ugly, but guilt is a different beast altogether.

 

*

 

There’s not much to do and Changmin knows the medical staff are getting antsy. He’s not physically unwell, no injuries – any wounds that he might’ve had healed long ago, although he can still feel a twinge in his right side where a rib might not have healed properly – nothing that they can fix or help him with.

So, on the fifth day, he gets out.

Packs what little things he has left (clothes, a book about architecture of all things and a bracelet Yunho had given to him two years before they were separated) and leaves with a quiet nod of thanks.

He doubts that they’ll miss him and his restless nights.

The bracelet is a silver, elegant but generally impractical little thing, which is why it spent the last five years at the very bottom of Changmin’s travelling bag. Save, but never entirely forgotten.

It’s only been worn twice, so Changmin puts it on and makes it a third.

 

*

 

It’s been six days since the war ended.

Six days for the initial elation to wear off, for reality – a big, terrifying reality – to settle in.

Remnants of the victory celebration are still littering the square outside the base. Yellow streamers hang limply from the surrounding trees and crumbling temples and confetti in varying shades of yellow and red litter the flattened land and the pathways leading away into the forest.

Avoiding the gazes of the people around him – all of them grey-faced and determined – Changmin sets off into the trees and towards the nearest port, they managed to dig out of the dirt.

He (like a lot of people the war had grudgingly spared) doesn’t have anything to return to. A home planet, maybe, but not much more.

Changmin’s memories of his home are hazy. A queasy collection of a vibrant childhood and an image of his home, burning against the darkening sky.

Sometimes –  on really bad nights – he can still taste the soot behind his teeth.

He’s not going home. The word has lost its meaning.

Instead, he finds a ship – a repurposed ferry with a repurposed crew that are short one helping hand. Changmin volunteers and (recognising the lost, aimless air about him) they recruit him.

 

*

 

It’s mostly repair work that they do.

They fly from planet to planet, from moon to moon; anything that’s been touched by the war and offer their services to whatever people they can find.

Changmin recognises some of the places they visit, but things look different without the shielding goggles of a mission over his eyes. The damage looks worse somehow, instead of becoming part of the scenery like it would have a month ago or so, it stands out like wound or a missing tooth.

He knows what trade routes he helped blow up, he knows the structure of the buildings they help rebuild. He sees cracks in walls, nooks and useful crannies and memorises them. It’s a habit, but one that makes his stomach churn.

The guilt weighs as heavy as ever.

“Collateral damage,” he once says automatically when they survey the destruction of half a mining town. Buildings of some historic and cultural value reduced to nothing more than rubble and ash.

Changmin didn’t light the fuses on this particular disaster but he did plant the explosives.

The man he’s working with – a guy called Key with spiky short hair, the growing remnants of a buzzcut – glances at him.

“Spy?” He asks.

Changmin shakes his head.

“Saboteur.”

“Yeah,” Key holds out his hand for Changmin to shake, “me too.”

There’s innocent blood on both their hands, the same sort of guilt and the same sort of shadows under their eyes.

“All for the cause,” Changmin cheers in a weak attempt to lighten the mood.

Key laughs a laugh that doesn’t fit into the desolation around them and pumps his fist into the air with a pained but vaguely amused sort of expression.

 

*

 

It’s easy to throw himself into this work.

He works, drowns himself in helping, rebuilding, apologising.

There’s blood on his hands again, but this time it’s his own.

Yunho’s bracelet remains clean, however. Changmin makes sure of it.

When he can’t sleep, which is more often than not, he cleans it. Ridding it of any blood or dirt that it might have accumulated over the day.

It doesn’t really help, none of it really does. Changmin is constantly surrounded by memories. He sees his old footprints in the sand and dirt of the places they visit, unconsciously retraces his own steps until he’s lost in blood and fire.

 

*

 

On Naboo, their little crew is joined by a collection of soldiers and relief workers from D’Qar. They’re bright-eyed, fresh-faced and young.

It pisses him off more than it really should. He’s too young to be this jaded, but he wishes he could look upon the ruins they visit with nothing more than honest sympathy and not waves and waves of guilt.

So when the D’Qarian workers organise a little celebration in the square of the newly rebuilt town Changmin only follows his crew into the thick of the festivities with the intention of drinking himself into oblivion.

It almost works.

He’s half-blind with drink and misplaced rage by the time a thought with the same destructive force as some of the bombs Changmin’s built sneaks its way into his head.

People are dancing and singing. Singing songs he doesn’t recognise.

Yunho liked dancing and singing, revelled in any opportunity they got to indulge in things like that.

Changmin remembers Imperial galas, masks and pink sparkling drinks. He remembers Yunho’s delighted grin when the mission plan was laid out in front of them. He remembers dancing for the first time when he was 22-years-old, which according to Yunho, was far too old.

Somewhere between remembering and wanting to forget Changmin dives back into the crowd and finds a pretty young D’Qarian medic. He’s slight and dark-skinned, but he has wide black eyes that make forgetting hard.

So Changmin takes him back on board his ship and fucks him until he’s crying into the pillow.

It doesn't help.

 

*

 

“Will I see you again?”

Changmin squints against the morning sun.

“Probably not.”

It’s a kindness he can just about afford. A kindness that tastes like battery acid, but a kindness nonetheless.

The galaxy is big and if Changmin can lose the one thing that meant anything to him then he can lose this nameless medic too.

“I’m sorry,” he forces out when the boy shuffles past him, limping slightly.

He pauses and turns. His eyes are still the familiar contradiction of dark and bright that makes Changmin’s heart seize up painfully.

“It’s okay,” is the boy’s reply, laced with more understanding than Changmin expected.

It hurts.

It hurts because it’s a kindness and Changmin is undeserving.

 

*

 

Changmin leaves.

He turns thirty, doesn’t sleep for two days and then, finally, decides to leave.

The crew – bless their hearts – play along with his little charade and list off encouraging statements and empty promises of seeing each other again. They exchange comm numbers and Key waxes poetic about the galaxy being endless.

Changmin’s sort of counting on it.

 

*

 

They drop him off on a small industrial planet and say their goodbyes in a heartfelt but appropriately brisk way. From there Changmin talks his way onto a freighter heading for Coruscant and tries to catch up on some of the sleep he’s been unintentionally depriving himself of.

He dreams of the yellow walls of his childhood home back on Ithor, he dreams of golden sand and hot flickering air. Fire, Yunho’s laugh–

It’s cold when he startles awake, slumped against the cold metal of a container. He presses his cheek against the cold and tries to think of things that don’t hurt.

Sleep doesn’t come to him again and he sits in the semi-darkness methodically fraying his nerves and listening to the few other passengers and crew breathe. Nothing helps.

By the time they arrive on Coruscant, he’s wound tight and hollow.

 

*

 

Coruscant is not in any way lacking in potential jobs.

Even for people like Changmin – off-worlders, uprooted by the war and without much formal education. Coruscant is indiscriminate that way. As long as you can work you’re welcome.

What Changmin lacks in formal education he makes up for with the fact that he spent almost 16 years of his life recoding droids, building bombs and traps and learning more languages than even some of his superiors.

He’s a relatively capable pilot, reliable and quick on his feet.

 

In a run-down port bar that’s still showing lingering signs of the war now just over a year gone he runs into a vaguely familiar face, who buys him a drink and sits him down for a chat.

“How long have you been out?” She asks, flicking a drop of condensation off of the rim of her glass.

“Just over a year. You?”

She snorts and holds up her left hand where pale skin, flesh and bone have been replaced by matte black metal that whirs softly as she flexes her fingers. “Got pulled out on Eadu two years ago. Got this stupid thing for my trouble.”

“It’s not too bad,” Changmin says and grins when the skeletal black fingers flip him off.

After a short pause where they both stare into space and sip their drinks, she finally speaks up again and asks:

“What have you been up to then? Found your friends?”

“No,” he answers shortly and takes another gulp of his drink, relishing in the burn. “I’ve been sticking to relief work mostly.”

“Very noble.”

He gives her a look and she shrugs, unphased by the ice in his gaze.

“Do you want a job?”

“Are you offering?”

She taps her glass with her metal hand and it _tings_ loudly. The sound bounces around Changmin’s skull, prompting the distant beginnings of a headache and he looks away.

“How are you around people? Ferries?”

Changmin – like any sensible being that somehow managed to survive the past twenty years – has developed just a couple of paranoic tendencies. Not enough to make him unstable, he saw what that looked like from his stay in the sick bay on Yavin IV, but a good handful that makes the prospect of piloting a ferry teeming with people sound more like nightmare fuel than a job.

She gauges as much from the tension in his shoulders and rephrases, “Cargo then? Freighters.”

“How much?”

It’s as good as a straight-forward _yes_ as she’s going to get out of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have watched two (2) star wars films and maybe one prequel by accident when i was like, seven or something so i really shouldn't be legally allowed to write this.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i highly recommend you listen to [this song](https://youtu.be/23xSJ19YW1I) while reading this chapter!

Getting himself a shipping license is easy work and soon he’s sort of settling in a small rented apartment on the edge of a district meant more for growing families with children and maybe a pet or two than for lonely men with blood on their hands.

He’s afraid of touching the two young kids who live across the hall with their two mothers; awkwardly fends off their incessant affection until he gets caught by one of their moms – a stern, blue-skinned woman called Joo – and grudgingly lets them befriend him.

“You were in the _Restistance_?” One of the little boys asks one evening when he walks in (uninvited) to find Changmin sitting on the floor of his living room methodically cleaning and reassembling his standard-issue blaster.

There’s no point denying the obvious so Changmin keeps it to a simple, nondescript, “Yeah. A long time ago.”

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

Silence.

And then:

“Killing people,” Changmin says slowly, carefully, “is bad.”

It’s not a _no_ and they both know it.

 

*

 

For the first couple of weeks, Changmin sleeps on the floor.

His bed – a wide, impractical thing that takes up most of his small bedroom – is too soft. Even the beds back in the hospital bay on Yavin IV had been vaguely uncomfortable, hard where mattresses should technically be soft and the cloudy softness of his bed here is unbearable.

In the end, he goes out and buys a bedroll and spreads it out in the narrow gap between the bed and the window which has a perfect view of a neighbouring tower block.

From there, on the floor, he can watch the shuttles and speeders race past. From there he can stare up into the sky that’s littered with stars and satellites.

Changmin can remember missions on Coruscant, where they had spent most of their time weaving in and out of the underworld from the various, park-sized ventilation shafts. It had been darker then, quieter.

Now that the Empire is gone some of the colour is returning to the commercial districts. The people are free now, they survived. And what do you do when you survive one of the bloodiest wars in history?

 _You_ _buy stuff_.

Or at least that’s what the increasing amount of billboards cluttering up the skyline are preaching.

So Changmin lies under the flickering, uneven neon lights and counts the satellites. He dreams of Yunho and an endless day on Endor lost in the depths of a forest with only each other and the trees for company.

The dream is green and warm and Changmin wakes up to the grey chill of Coruscant, alone on the floor of his apartment with Yunho’s bracelet digging a bruise into the inside of his wrist.

It doesn’t fade – Changmin makes sure of that. He spends the seconds between jobs pressing down on the mottled, purpling skin and not thinking about the pain or the implications he’s still chasing three years later.

Time heals all wounds, but Changmin’s working hard to keep this one open and fresh. As painful as ever.

 

*

 

It takes on especially long, humid day of work for Changmin to realise that he hasn’t done anything to his hair in almost four years. It’s in his eyes, sticking to the back of his neck in straggly, uneven strands.

So when he gets home again he waters the plant he had acquired a month ago, strips and punishes himself with a quick icy shower.

Then he gets dressed and slips across the hall, leaving wet footprints on the floor, and asks for a pair of scissors that he could borrow for the evening.  

“What—don’t have any of your own?” Joo says as she hands them over.

He shrugs and mutters something about weapons making him uneasy.

It isn’t a lie, more like a half-truth. The blaster under his pillow is a habit, but the sight of some of the shipments that come and go still manages to make him feel sick. Coruscant is indiscriminate – even with the wars that they choose to fund.

 

So now he’s standing in front of his bathroom mirror with his hair bunched in a ponytail, scissors in one hand and the other braced on the washbasin, knuckles standing out white against his fading tan.

The first _snip_ cuts through the silence and Changmin flinches.

It’s too quiet and everything else is too loud, so Changmin drops the scissors and the clump of hair and hurries back into the living room to find some random HoloShow to drown out the silence.

He cuts his hair until it’s the same sort of length it was when he met Yunho. He’d been twenty-years-old at the time and angry right down to his bones.

A barely grown kid soldier.

There’s a trimmer in a drawer under the washbasin and Changmin runs it along the sides and the back of his head until he’s not staring the past in the face.  

What looks back at him now might be worse, but he tries not to think about it.  

 

 

*

 

It’s hard to let go.

Even four years later.

The war ended two years ago and Changmin’s celebrating his 31st birthday by standing under the awning of a late-night convenience store, hiding from the rain.

Coruscant doesn’t have seasons as much as it has _moods._

It’s late and rain is coming down in icy sheets. Changmin stares out into the semi-darkness and tries to calculate how much sleep he’ll get if he risks the rain now for the shift looming early the next day.

He watches, detached, as people bundle out of the nearby shuttle dock. Two pink-skinned women with a map projected into the air between them send him two, matching inviting smiles as they sidle past.

In the brief second between considering their invitation and squinting at the burst of blue light as the shuttle rises back into the air Changmin catches sight of a mouth and a flash of dark, laughing eyes half-hidden under a hood.

He’s stumbling out into the downpour before rational thought can catch up with him. Following a hunched set of shoulders and a mouth, speaking, moving and he’s straining his ears to hear – to be certain – but the rain and the pitching ring in his ears block out any sound. He can’t think. Only hope.

It’s only when they reach an alley – dirty and smelling strongly of vomit and rotting food – and are partially lit up by the unflattering pink neon of a sex shop advertisement that Changmin manages to catch up with the hooded stranger.

In an ungraceful, desperate swoop he reaches out and grabs the stranger by the shoulder.

He’s staring at the muzzle of a blaster before he can speak.

The face behind the blaster is not Yunho’s and it’s only by sheer strength of will that Changmin remains upright.

“I’m sorry—” he forces out, “I—I mistook you for someone.”

He keeps his gaze on the ground, unsure of what he would do if he had to look the stranger in the face. His fingers twitch and his own blaster rests heavily against his ribs.

The stranger’s blaster doesn’t move; he is not mistaking Changmin’s lowered gaze for submission. It isn’t and Changmin’s about as dangerous as any wounded stray.

“Everything’s all right,” the stranger suddenly speaks, voice clear and loud and decidedly foreign in the static noise of the rain around them.

His voice is nothing like Yunho’s.

He isn’t speaking to Changmin, who looks up for the first time, squinting against the rain in his eyes.

His eyes are wrong too, the right sort of shape, but lit up in the pink neon they’re too light. There are more sharp edges about him. 

No contradiction.

Yunho had been full of contradictions and paradoxes. Sharp edges and light, softness and dark. What Changmin is staring at now is more like himself.

“I’m sorry,” the stranger, wearing some of Yunho’s face, says.

Changmin laughs, hoarse with the emptiness stuck in his throat.

Anger and shame well up in the pit of his stomach as the stranger lowers his weapon, pity written in every unnaturally sharp line of his face. He knows Changmin’s not a threat, not a serious one anyway, just a wounded stray chasing ghosts.

Changmin feels sick.

“It’s okay.”

 

*

 

_“I’ve never seen this much water before.”_

_Changmin who had been methodically deconstructing some poor guy’s cybernetic hand pauses and looks up, surprised._

_“Never?”_

_Yunho shakes his head, not once taking his eyes off of the endless blue expanse of water below them._

_It’s breathtaking and unique, even in this galaxy, but Changmin, as brash, bold and skittish as any 22-year-old who’s only now coming into contact with the idea of wanting something, someone, couldn’t give less of a fuck about the view._

_He drops the hand and scoots over to sit next to Yunho._

_“Do you know how to swim?”_

_Again, Yunho shakes his head._

_“Do you?” He asks._

_It’s a stupid question and Changmin snorts. “Of course,” he says. And then, with a nervous half-glance at Yunho who’s still staring into the blue, he adds, “I’ll teach you.”_

_Yunho smiles and opens his mouth to speak, but bubbles pour out instead. He reaches out, frantic and panicked as the world tilts forcefully, filling the world around them with blue, blue, blue, blue–_

Changmin wakes up with a violent start; races his own rabbitting heart and churning stomach to the bathroom and kneels over the toilet until he’s only retching up bile and anguish.

He doesn’t sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lisa stop torturing changmin challenge: failed


End file.
